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Viking Age
The '''Viking Age' lasted from about 840 AD until about 1000 AD, which also marks the end of the Early Middle Ages (476-1000 AD). It began with the intensification of Scandinavian Viking activities from 840 AD, after the sporadic early raiding that followed Lindisfarne in 793 AD. It then ended with the beginning of the decline of the Viking threat around 1000 AD. On 8 June 793, the pagan Vikings exploded onto the historical record with their raid on the island monastery of Lindisfarne in England. The Vikings were uniquely terrifying. Clad in the skins of wolves or bears, these hulking warriors appeared like something out of a nightmare of the frozen north, recognising no Church sanctuary and showing no mercy. Their dragon-headed longboats could take them across seas, up rivers far inland, and if they encountered an army, easily outrun them. Not all sought the same thing. The Vikings who struck out for Iceland wanted to colonise. Those who penetrated Eastern Europe via the Dvina and Dnieper rivers were more interested in trade with the Byzantines and Muslims; they would eventually settle as the Kievan Rus, the cultural origins of Russia. It was in the wealthy but weak British Isles and France where the Vikings truly earned the reputation that defined them. The impact of the Vikings even on Western Europe was far from entirely negative. In Anglo-Saxon England, Viking raiding turned to large-scale settlement and the fighting that followed under Alfred the Great was seminal to the foundation of the nation-state of England. To the north, the Celtic peoples were drawn together by the threat into the Kingdom of Scotland under the House of Alpin. The same almost happened in Ireland under Brian Boru, but with his death at the Battle of Clontarf (1014) the opportunity was lost. In sharp contrast, the marauding Vikings aggravated the already grave internal problems of the French kings, and the authority of the throne completely collapsed. Now it was the feudal-lords who held the real power, among them Vikings settled on the lower Seine Valley in Normandy; a century later the Normans would be one of the most powerful feudal states of Western Europe. Germany did not endure Vikings raids on the same scale, but Otto the Great proved himself on the battlefield against the similar pagan Hungarians in the east, to forge the Holy Roman Empire, the leading realm in Europe in the mid-10th and 11th centuries. Perhaps the major contribution of the Viking was the vast commercial network that they built, from Central Asia to Greenland and even briefly to North America, connecting parts of the world that had previously had little or no connection. Gradually the story of the brutal Viking raiders became the story of the Christianisation of Scandinavia, and the struggle of dynasties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to establish stable kingdoms. While Western Europe was still slumbering in what could still be described as the Dark Ages, the Byzantine Empire was enjoying one last period of glory. The spectacular reign of Emperor Basil I ushered in a revival imperial power and a stable dynasty that would see the Empire recover a third of its former territory, and spur a renaissance of Byzantine art, architecture, and learning; a Byzantine Golden Age (867-1025). History The Vikings On 8 June 793, the monks on the island monastery of Lindisfarne, off the coast of Northumbria in England, were unpleasantly surprised by the arrival of dragon-headed longships, disgorging pagan marauders bearing wicked axes and ruin covers swords. Sparing neither the old nor infirm, they plundered whatever looked valuable and left the bodies of the monks trampled, "like dung in the streets" as Alcuin of York later wrote, a prominent figure in Charlemagne's court. This was not the first encounter with the Scandinavian Vikings: they had probably been visiting the British Isles for decades to trade in amber or animal fur. Four years before Lindisfarne, three Viking ships had beached in Wessex where an official was killed, though that may have been a trading expedition that went wrong. But the attack on one of the most famous monastic communities in the British Isles shook all of Christiandom to its core, and is traditionally used to mark the beginning of the Viking Age '(793-1066). The Vikings were not a race; the word means “''pirate” in Old Norse. Most came from the areas now known as Denmark, Norway and Sweden. This was simply the last and most dramatic period in the long story of folk-movements from Scandinavia; this may have been the original homeland of the Goths, Burgundians, and Lombards. The Scandinavians again began to move outwards from the 8th century onwards, for reasons which are by no means clear, but are possibly rooted in over-population and land-hunger. Since early Classical Antiquity, the coastlines had been dotted with fishing and farming settlements, in a region with a very short growing season. When the world-climate was favourable, they could enjoy population growth, that the agricultural capacity of the land could not sustain. Invariably it was the young men who would coalesce into warbands and seek opportunities elsewhere. As the Norse Sagas make clear, others were motivated to leave by Internal feuding and the exiling of a communities bad-seeds. Finally, there was a cult of violent personal valour in Scandinavian society that was even stronger than that of medieval Europe; a man's worth was defined by his skill as a warrior. There is nothing very unusual in history about a barbarian peoples erupting from their homelands to devastate a weak but relatively rich society; the same phenomena has already been seen in the late Roman Empire and the Muslim conquests. A few factor made the Vikings uniquely terrifying. Firstly, as pagans, they saw no special sanctity in Christian churches and monasteries, just a conveniently provided concentrations of precious metals and wealth. Some historians speculate that the Vikings were retaliating in response to Christianity's encroachment into pagan lands, especially Charlemagne's conquest and forced conversion of Saxony from 772. Worshiping Odin who inspired berserker madness, these hulking warriors, hardened by their harsh northern existence, clothed in the skins of wolves or bears, and showing no mercy, appeared out of "the frozen north" like something out of a nightmare; alas the impractical horned helmets are a modern myth promulgated by 19th-century theatre. The second factor was their mastery of the sea and rivers. At home these Scandinavians lived in small independent communities around the coast, where the mountainous terrain and fjords made the sea the easiest way of communication between them. Originally invented for trading, the Viking would negotiate the seas in their superbly streamlined longships, equipped with oars along almost the entire length of the boat, and a rectangular single-mast sail. They were wide enough to be stable in the open ocean, with a shallow enough draft to sail up rivers even just one meter deep far inland, and light enough to be carried overland. This advantage cannot be overstates, since none of the Western realms were capable sailors; the Visigothic Kingdom in Spain had probably been the last to put to sea. In the same day, the Vikings could raid a monasteries, check-out another monasteries for later, and move on before local forces could be mustered. If an army was encountered, they could easily outrun them and look for easier targets. They weren't especially capable in siegecraft, but would capture many cities through surprise attacks and clever deceits. The third factor that made the Vikings different from other raiders was their ability to colonise lands. They were not a literate people in terms of producing a literary legacy, at least not during the Viking Age, though they used runes in commerce and worship. But assemblies of all the free men, known as the Thing, were a very well-established tradition, where the community would gather to discuss matters of justice, amend laws, and assess the response to any new situation. They thrust out across the water for four centuries, and not just settle lands but left behind lasting communities which in the end stretched from Greenland to Kiev; Iceland advertises itself today with some accuracy as the oldest democratic parliament in the world. The Vikings of popular imagination often differ considerably from the complex historical reality. Not all sought the same things. The Norwegians who struck out to the Scottish islands, Iceland, and the far west wanted to colonise. The Swedes who penetrated Russia were much busier in trade. The Danes did most of the plundering and piracy the Vikings are remembered for. But all these themes of the Scandinavian migrations wove in and out of one another. No branch of these peoples had a monopoly of any one of them. Usually they began with opportunistic raiding, and their subsequent behaviour depended on the peoples they encountered: in Iceland where they were no people, they settled; and the Byzantines and Muslims were powerful so they predominantly traded. It was in the wealthy but weak British Isles and France where the Vikings truly earned the reputation that they are now remembered for. Yet their impact everywhere was far from entirely negative. Once the traumas of murder, rape, enslavement and destruction of holy sites passed, they left behind a more developed commercial culture and a vast trading network connecting parts of the world that had previously had little or no connection. Vikings in the British Isles The Viking raid on the holy island of Lindisfarne in 793 was a story that was be repeated time and again to other monasteries that dotted the coastline of the British Isles. They were not yet rich by the standards of continental monasticism, but with sufficient wealth to attract hit-and-run raids. Within two years of Lindisfarne, raids are recorded on its sister monastery of Jarrow in Northumbria, its mother-house of Iona in Scotland, and Rathlin in Ireland. By the 830s, the coastal monasteries were increasingly being abandoned, and the pattern began to change: Viking raiding parties became larger; inland settlements along rivers were targeted; and encampments were established on islands to remain throughout the winter. Celtic Ireland was the focus of much of the early Viking attention. It was a patchwork of perhaps a hundred petty-kingdoms, and few allowed the arrival of the Vikings to distract them from their own ongoing feuds. Irish monasteries were relatively rich, as they were often used by local rulers as rudimentary banks. And in a land that had never been conquered by the Romans, roads were all but unknown, so monasteries and towns were invariably located on rivers. By the late 830s, the Vikings had several well-fortified stockade in strategic dispersed throughout Ireland that quickly became more permanent. One was founded in 841 on the River Liffey which soon turned into a thriving trading-post and solidified it as an important city; from these small beginnings Ireland's capital of Dublin began. They also established settlements at Cork, Limerick, Waterford, and Wexford, and settled down as just another type of petty-kingdoms. The Vikings refocused their energies on '''Anglo-Saxon England from the 840s onwards. Canterbury was successfully attacked in 842. In 850, Vikings overwintered for the first time in England, and in the summer raided London and Canterbury again. In 865, a Viking army of unprecedented size arrived on the east coast of England, equipped for conquest rather than quick booty; the so-called the Great Heathen Army. It was led by the "brothers" Ubba, Hvitserk, and Ivar the Boneless, supposedly the sons of the legendary Viking chieftain Ragnar Lodbrok, who had recently been killed by the king of Northumbria. They landed in East Anglia, wintered there, and then headed north over the River Humber into Northumbria, which was in the midst of a civil war. Before long the Vikings had killed both rival kings, and captured their capital of York, the ancient Roman city of Eboracum. For the next 90-years, it would become the centre of the Danish realm in England known as Danelaw '''(866-954). In 869, Ivar's portion of the army headed south, where he conquered East Anglia, captuing and killing its king. In 871, Vikings were reinforced by a new host from Scandinavia, the Great Summer Army under Bagsecg. Only one Anglo-Saxon kingdom remained, Wessex, and it was to give England its first national hero, '''Alfred the Great (871-899). When he was born, it must have seemed unlikely that Alfred would ever be king, for he had three elder brothers. He may have been destined for a scholars life, since he had a well-travelled early life, making two journeys to Rome twice and visiting the French court with his father. Each of Alfred's brothers reigned in turn, but each died in their early twenties, until Alfred was became the king of Wessex in April 871. He would proved a brilliant warrior-king and a wise ruler; he is the only monarch in English history to earn the epithet "the Great", apart from the Scandinavian king Cnut the Great (d. 1035). Nevertheless, Alfred's early reign was a struggled for survival. A roaming army of Vikings under Guthrum had been plaguing southern England for a decade, and he fought a series of skirmish against them, notably winning the first significant English victory at the Battle of Ashdown (January 871). By late 871 the Vikings had been persuaded to withdraw, according to tradition by stubborn Wesex resistance; in truth, Alfred almost certainly bribed them to leave, a precursor of the Danegeld of later less fated rulers. This merely shifted the problem to Mercia, which by 877 had lost the eastern half of it's territory to the Danelaw, which by now encompassed more than half of England. Nevertheless, for the next five years Wessex was left in peace, and Alfred used the time to a a new system of national defence; a tactic somewhat similar to the Late Roman Empire under Aurelian (d. 275). It was based around a network of fortified strongholds at strategic points throughout the kingdom known as Burghs, continually manned by a local militias levied from the surrounding Shire; ''many of the boundaries he established would last until 1974. Some were twin towns straddling a river and connected by a fortified bridge, thus blocking the passage of Viking ships; an innovation the French had been using for a generation with some success. These strongholds would later have unforeseen benefits; market towns would gradually grow around them, leading to a revival of urbanisation in England. Alfred also established the beginnings of an English fleet, and by 875 could boast a modest naval victory against seven Danish ships. From 876, the Vikings were regularly breaking the peace treaty. Perhaps they came to appreciate that the greatest barrier to conquering Wessex was the king himself, for in the winter of 878 they launched a surprise attack on the royal hunting lodge of Chippenham. Alfred barely escaped with his life into a nearby swamp. There is a famous legend that Alfred was sheltered by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left him to watch some baking for her, but preoccupied with the problems of the realm, he let the cakes burn, for which he was roundly scolded upon her return. This was the low-water mark for the Anglo-Saxon cause, the nearest that the Vikings ever came to conquering the whole of England. Within a few months however, Alfred regrouped his forces, launched a surprise counter-offensive, and won a decisive victory in the ensuing Battle of Edington (May 878). Then pursuing the retreating Vikings to their encampment, he forced them to negotiate peace terms. The resulting Treaty of Wedmore (878) effectively agreed the mutual co-existence of Alfred domain in south-western England and Viking Danelaw of the north-east. Perhaps more significantly, Guthrum, the Danish ruler of East Anglia, agreed to be baptised a Christian, both an early step towards the conversion of Scandinavia, and a sign that the Vikings might be divided from one another. The next time a Viking warband raided England in 885, the Danes of East Anglia were just as motivated to defend their new homeland as the Anglo-Saxons. Alfred used the raid as a pretext to capture London from the Danelaw the next year, a crucial bridging point on the River Thames which flowed right into the heart of Wessex. For the rest of his reign, Alfred was able to focus on restoring the material and cultural well-being of his realm: he improved his kingdom's legal system, coinage, and trade; encouraged the education of young nobles; translated into English vernacular key works of Latins that the king deemed "''most necessary for all men to know"; and commissioned an Anglo-Saxon account of English history, based on various sources notably those of the Venerable Bede. Although he would never adopt the title for himself, Alfred the Great is traditionally considered the first King of England. Alfred's successors continued to drive back the Viking frontier. His son Edward (889-924) won a crushing victory against a large-scale incursion by the Vikings of Northumbria at the Battle of Tettenhall (August 910), and by the end of his reign had wrestled East Anglia, Essex and eastern Mercia away from the Danelaw, with each advance secured by fortified strongholds on Alfred’s model. In fact, the Danes largely welcomed incorporation into of England, with civilisation and Christianity having done their slow work; a culture settled on the land wanted law and order, and protection from roving warbands. In 927, Alfred’s grandson Athelstan (924-939) took possession of Northumbria including York, thus becoming the first king to have direct rule of all England. Northumbria subsequently swapped hands three times, until the last Viking king of Northumbria, Eric Bloodaxe, was expelled in 954. The English kingdom was finally consolidated during the long stable reign of Edgar (959-975), and has remained in political unity ever since. It was only when ability failed in Alfred’s line under Ethelred the Unready (978-1013) that the Anglo-Saxon monarchy came to grief and a new Viking offensive took place. His reign also established the complex family links between the Anglo-Saxons and Normans that would ultimately end in the Norman conquest of England. Just as England was coming of age, at almost exactly the same time a new kingdom was forming in Celtic Scotland. At this time there were at least four distinctive ethnic groups in the northern-most part of the British Isles: the Picts in the north and east, the Gaelic speaking Scots in the west, while the south was contested between Celtic Britons and Anglo-Saxons. Like the rest of the British Isle, Scotland was raided repeatedly by the Vikings. In 839, a major incursion invaded the Pictish kingdom via the easily navigable River Tay and River Earn, where they defeated and killed the king of the Picts along with much of aristocracy in battle. The sophisticated kingdom, which had been stable for more than 100 years, fell into chaos. According to tradition, Scotland's first national hero, Kenneth MacAlpin (d. 858), stepped into the power vacuum, uniting the Scots and Picts to successfully drive-off the Vikings, and was subsequently accepted as the first king of the unified Kingdom of Alba, the future Kingdom of Scotland '(889-1707). A nice heroic story but sadly a myth. Modern historians reveal a more complicated and gradual process of unification. Kenneth himself was of Pictish descent, presumably with ties to previous kings, and was king of only a Pictland left devastated by the Vikings, who did eventually move-on, probably when there was simply no more plunder to be had. Kenneth's grandson, Donald II Alpin (889-900), in commonly accepted as the first true king of Scotland. His uncles throne had been usurped, and Donald spent his youth in exile in the north of Ireland. He returned to Scotland in 889, and seized back the throne of the Picts; a Pictish king steeped in the Gaelic way of life, language, and religious tradition. Gradually Pictish ways fell out of favour, and Gaelic culture prevailed throughout the united Kingdom of Alba, especially during the long stable reign of his cousin and successor Constantine II Alpin (900–943). He introduced an important new ceremony; he was crowned king in the royal city of Scone upon the sacred ''Stone of Destiny, a simple block of sandstone whose origin has sadly been lost to the mists of time. It would form the basis for all future coronation of Scottish monarchs. The young kingdom's survival was touch-and-go from the outset. In 934, king Athelstan of England invaded Scotland for uncertain reasons, perhaps related to the unclear border between the two kingdoms. Constantine never engaged the large Anglo-Saxon force but withdrew to the virtually impregnable fortress of Dunnottar and negotiated his withdrawal on acknowledging Æthelstan's overlordship. Dissatisfied with this arrangement, Constantine built an alliance with Viking king Olaf of Dublin, and invaded England in turn. The two sides clashed at the Battle of Brunanburh (937), about which little can be certain except that it was an English victory; for decades afterwards it was known in Anglo-Saxon, Welsh, Irish, Icelandic and Norse sources as simply "the great battle". Brunanburh seems to have been a pyrrhic victory for Æthelstan, preserving the unity of both England and Scotland, destined to be each others most persistent foes. Meanwhile, the Viking Age for Scotland did not end until the mid-13th-century. The Scandinavians had settled the islands around the coast as the Kingdom of the Isles (c. 840-1266): the Orkneys, Shetlands, Hebrides, and the islands of the Firth of Clyde, as well as the Isle of Man. Key to the birth of nationhood in England and Scotland was the establishment of a stable dynasty; the House of Wessex (871-1013) and House of Alpin (889-1034). During the 9th and 10th centuries, frequent Viking raids on 'Celtic Wales '''forced the patchwork of petty-kingdoms to cooperate, but attempts at political unity proved only partially successful and impermanent. Rhodri Mawr (d. 878), the king of Gwynedd, won a notable victory against the Viking in 856, and was widely accepted as king of almost the entire region by the end of his reign. However, on his death his realms were divided between his sons according to Welsh custom. Gruffydd ap Llywelyn (d. 1063) was the only ruler to be able to unite all of Wales under his rule. The Vikings did not colonised Wales heavily, though some settlement in the south is evident in place names such as Swansea. [[Inheritors of the Roman Empire#British Isles|'Celtic Ireland]] claims an even longer tradition of a national kingdom; a hierarchy of kingship from petty-kingdoms to provincial overkings (Munster, Leinster, Connacht, Ulster, and Meath), all ruled by a High Kings, who sat at the Hill of Tara in Meath, stretching in an almost unbroken line back to the 2nd-century. Modern historians believe this is an 8th-century constructed to justify the current status of provincial kings by projecting it back into the remote past. In reality, with a population of fewer than half-a-million people, Ireland had over 150 greater or lessor petty-kingdoms, constantly at war with each other, and nominal allegiance to a High King was given when it suited and withdrawn just as quickly. By the 10th-century, Dublin and other Viking strongholds around the coast simply took their place among the shifting alliances and struggles for power. As power was being consolidated across the sea in England and Scotland, such developments could hardly have escaped the attention of an ambitious Irish king. Brian Boru '(d. 1014), the chieftain of what had been a petty-kingdom on the River Shannon, that had grown in power under his father and elder brother to become the most powerful in Munster in the south-west. Within two years of becoming king in 976, Brian had defeated his last rivals in Munster, Viking Limerick and Cashel, and been proclaimed overking of the province. He demanded tributes of all kinds from his vassal, including the most precious commodity of the age, cattle; Brian Boru means "''Brian of the cattle tributes". With a might army, he set about trying to control the whole island. By 997, he had force Leinster in the south-east into submission into submission, and reached an agreement with the Uí Néill whereby they recognised their respective halves of the country; the Uí Néill in the north and Brian in the south. The peace was short-lived. Three years later, Brian resumed his attack on the Uí Néill home province of Meath, and by 1002 were force to surrender the title of High King to him. For ten years, Brian was the undisputed king of Ireland. In alliance with the Church, he seems to have sought to establish a new form of kingship in Ireland, modeled on the English example; simply one king who had power over a unitary state. No sooner had all of the regional rulers in Ireland acknowledged Brian's authority than it was lost again. In 1012, Leinster and Viking Dublin rose in a rebellion that culminated in the Battle of Clontarf (April 1014) outside the walls of Dublin. The battle lasted from sunrise to sunset, and in the end the rebel forces were decisively defeated; the provincial king of Leinster and the Viking king of Dublin were both slain. Brian Boru didn't live to enjoy the fruits of victory. It is said that some fleeing enemies founded him in his tent after the battle and killed him; his eldest son had also died in the battle. Without Brian, Munster descended into civil war between his younger sons, and there would be no all-powerful High King of Ireland. The Battle of Clontarf later took on a greater role in the popular imagination, with Brian Boru uniting the native Christian Irish to free the land from pagan Viking occupation. A nice story but utter nonsense. The Vikings were a lessor power even before Clontarf, and fought as mercenaries on both sides of the battle. Vikings of Ireland did go into sharp decline aftwards, with Dublin formally incorporated into Leinster in 1052; Viking assimilation and intermarriage introduced red hair and freckles into the Irish gene pool. Meanwhile if anything, Brian's example led to centuries of even greater anarchy in Ireland over the title of High King, which in the parlance of the Irish annals, was almost always "High Kings with opposition"; one scholar wrote how competing kings had turned the country into a "trembling sod". This remains the case until a new group of invaders of Viking descent arrived on the Irish coast in 1169, the fateful conquest of the Anglo-Normans. Vikings in France Western Francia, or France as we can now call it, was first attacked by Viking raiders in 799, six years after Lindisfarne, during the reign of Charlemagne (d. 814), but systematic raiding did not begin until the mid-830s. The ongoing civil wars between the sons of Louis the Pious left the country wealth but weak, and quickly attracted the attention of the predatory Vikings. Big raids took place in Antwerp and Noirmoutier in 836, in Rouen on the River Seine in 841 and in Nantes on the River Loire in 842. The early culmination of these attacks came in the successful '''Siege of Paris (845). In March, a fleet of 120 Viking ships containing more than 5,000 men entered the Seine, supposedly led by the semi-legendary chieftain Ragnar Lodbrok. On their way up the Seine, Ragnar's forces raided Rouen again, and defeated a small Frankish army sent against them; he hanged 111 prisoners on an island in the river to honour Odin and incite terror in the remaining Frankish forces. When the Vikings reached Paris at the end of the month, they entered the city and plundered it. King Charles the Bald (840–877) could not assemble any effective defence against the marauders, and the Vikings withdrew only after being paid a ransom of 5,600 lbs of silver and gold. By 851, the Vikings were over-wintering in the lower Seine valley to extend their raiding season, rowing to Paris three more times in the 860s, and leaving each time only when they received a sufficient bribe. This not only bankrupted the treasury and convinced the Vikings that the Franks were weak, but further aggravated the already grave internal problems of the French kings. The population grew increasing resistant to handing over their valuables to royal tax collectors, and put their trust in local fief-lords who could offer protection against Viking hit-and-run tactics, more effectively than the sluggish royal armies. Although the authority of the Carolingian kings gradually collapsed, the French did eventually devise a method of stymieing the Vikings. In 864, two fortified bridges were commission in Paris, one on each side of the Île de la Cité. In another sign of the decline of royal power, this was not an initiative of the king, but a local one, ordered by Count Robert the Strong of Paris (d. 866). Their effectiveness were displayed when the Vikings again attacked Paris in 885, with a fleet of some 300 longboats and 30,000 men; the Siege of Paris (885-886). This occured when Robert's son Odo was Count of Paris, who refused their demands for tribute, despite being able to assemble only a few of hundred soldiers to defend the city. During almost a year of siege, the Viking repeatedly attempted to assault the city but each time were repulsed. As time went on, the Viking numbers dwindled as they left Paris to pillage easier targets upriver, and the last stragglers were eventually driven-off. The French throne had been effectively vacant since 884, with Charles the Fat (876-888) ruling both West and East Francia. When Charles died in 888, the French nobility elected Odo I Robertian (888-898) the first non-Carolingian king of France. Thus a new complexity was added to the fragile French political structures with the Carolingian and Robertian lines vied for the throne throughout the next century, with support for one or other depending on where the great nobles considered their best interests. By the reign of Charles III Carolingian (893-929), the Vikings had been settled in the lower Seine valley in Normandy for a decades. Yet they frequently quarreled among themselves until unified under a new chieftain, Rollo (d. 927). According to legend, he was of such enormous size that no horses could accommodate him, earning him the nickname Rollo the Walker since he had to go everywhere on foot. In 911, Rollo made another wild attempt on Paris. When this again failed, he besieged the smaller city of Chartres. King Charles was able to lift the siege but not drive-off the Vikings completely, so with no more gold to offer in tribute, King Charles made Rollo an astonishing offer known as the Treaty of St. Clair-sur-Epte (911). Charles officially granted him feudal rights over the city of Rouen and the surrounding territory of Normandy. In exchange, Rollo pledged vassalage to the French king, agreed to be baptised a Christian along with his entire army, and promised to guard the River Seine from further Viking attacks. True to his word, Viking raids on French soil did gradually subside from this point on. No doubt King Charles believed that his grant of land to the Vikings was a temporary measure that could be taken back later. But in Rollo he had unwittingly found a brilliant adversary. Rollo instantly recognised what he had; a premier stretch of northern France possessed of some of the finest farmland in the country. To survive in his new home meant abandoning most of his Viking traditions, assimilating with and winning the loyalty of his French subjects; he himself married a French woman and encouraged his men to do the same. Within a generations, the Normans, as they became known, had taken to the French language, customs, feudalism, legal system, and style of warfare; Viking armies always fought on foot, but the Normans would ride into their battles mounted. One final change took a little longer to sink-in; the conversion to Christianity. Rollo himself hedged his bets, having 100 prisoners sacrificed to Odin on his death. The descendants of Rollo and their French wives faced an uncertain future, surrounded by predatory neighbours and the French crown always looking for an excuse to reclaim her lost territory. Nevertheless, they would not only survive but became one of the most powerful feudal states of Western Europe.. By the time the Carolingian Dynasty finally ended in France with the death of Louis V (986–987), the pillaging of Vikings had given-way to the feudal political battles of great nobles and their knights. France was divided into a dozen or so territorial units ruled by magnates of varying standing and independence, the foremost among whom were the dukes and counts of Flanders, Anjou, Brittany, Vermandois, Toulouse, Burgundy, Gascony, Aquitaine, and Languedoc. Although there was a surviving the Carolingian claimant, the nobles instead elected a member of the Robertian faction to the throne, Hugh Capet (987-996). In truth, Hugh and his immediate successors were hardly more than crowned lords, whose real authority extended little beyond the Paris basin. Many of the king's vassals ruled over territories far greater than his own, and paid him little more than lip-service. This was hardly indicative of a dynasty that would rule one of Europe’s most powerful countries for the next 800 years. Yet by a happy accident Hugh Capet's descendants, the Capetian Dynasty (987-1328), would succeed to the French throne without conflict for until 1328; a total of fifteen Capetian kings in a direct line. This longevity was seminal to the foundation of the nation-state of France, for these kings would slowly but steadily increased their power and influence, until it grew to encompass the entirety of the realm by the reigns of Philip II and Louis IX in the 13th-century. Germany of Otto the Great In comparison to France, for a long time Germany enjoyed a greater degree of unity, despite the even more grave internal challenges. In a land that had never been conquered by the Romans, roads were all but unknown. There also remained strong regional rivalries and historical tribal identities: the Franks of Franconia and Lotharingia (modern-day French Lorraine), the Alemanni of Swabia, the recently conquered Saxony, and the Bavarians who are known to have existed since the 6th-century. Meanwhile, Germany faced external threats from both the west and the east. In the west, it had to contend with the marauding Vikings using the Rhine to penetrate far inland. The most notable Viking raid was in the winter of 881-82, when elements of the Great Heathen Army turned their aggression on the Rhineland after their defeat at the Battle of Edington (May 878) by Alfred the Great. Cologne, Bonn, Neuss, Jülich, and Andernach were plundered or forced to pay tribute. In the Rhineland, they encountered the old Roman road network and used it to inflict the greatest outrage of all; storming the old imperial capital of Aachen and desecrating the tomb of Charlemagne. Nevertheless, the Viking impact of Germany were much less dramatically than in France and the British Isles. No doubt the explanation lies in the shared a border with Denmark which allowed for more direct political engagement with Scandinavia; we often hear about Viking raids followed by an apology and recompense from a Danish king. German sources were much more concerned with raids and incursions from the east than with Scandinavia. The region north of the Danube has been Europe's doorway to tribal groups arriving from the central Asian steppes. Here the Huns and Avars first presented themselves to the Roman Empire, requesting or demanding tribute. The Magyars had been living for several centuries near the mouth of the Don, as vassals of the Turkic Khazar Khaganate (650-969). From 830 they migrated west, spending a few years in the Balkans in the service of the Byzantine emperor, before moving-on to establish themselves in the Carpathian Basin (modern day Hungary). In 895, the chieftains of the seven Magyar tribes elect as their leader Árpád (d. 907). Although his people numbered no more than 25,000, together they subdued the scattered population of the region within the space of a few years. Thus Árpád was the founder of a nation which somehow in all the upheavals of central Europe would retain its identity and Finno-Ugric language down through the centuries, surrounded by Slav neighbours. For several decades, the pagan Hungarians were a profoundly disruptive force in the region, constantly raiding west into Germany and south into Italy. Magyar armies were mostly light cavalry and highly mobile. Attacking without warning, they would plundered the countryside and departed before any defence could be mustered. If forced to fight, they would harass their enemies with arrows, then invariably feign retreat, tempting them to break ranks and pursue, thus luring them into a vulnerable position. When young Louis III Carolingian (900-911) died, the only legitimate claimant descended directly from Charlemagne was King Charles III of France. Desiring a weak king, the German magnates instead elected one of their own to the vacant throne, Conrad of Franconia (911-18). When he proven too weak, the magnates next elected Henry I of Saxony (919-936). So began the central theme of medieval Germany history; strong hereditary regional magnates, and the paradox of an elected feudal overlord. Unlike in France, even during periods when a stable dynasty was establish, an emperor could not nominate an heir without the approval through election of the German magnates. They tended to accept the rule of a strong king, but to reassert their independence in other reigns. Nevertheless, for quite some time the system seemed to work. The reign of Henry's son, Otto the Great (936-973), amounted to a revival and extension of the eastern half of Charlemagne's great empire. Otto continued his father's work of unifying all German tribes into a single kingdom, crushing revolts by both the dukes of Bavaria and Franconia in the first two years of his reign. He then used the Christian Church as a tool to strengthened his royal authority. He wrested from the dukes the powers of appointing bishops and abbots within their territory, and increased their powers and lands, thereby making them subject to his personal control; in effect establishing a national church 600 years before Henry VIII. Otto spent much of his reign securing his eastern border. A Hungarian raid on Saxony was successfully repulsed in 938, and another on Bavaria in 943. He then resoundingly defeated them at the Battle of Lechfeld (955), after which the Hungarians completely ceased all raids westwards; by 975 the Hungarians had begun the process of integration into Western Christendom. Victory at Lechfeld firmly secured Otto's hold over his kingdom, but his ambition did not stop there. In Frankish northern Italy the Carolingian Dynasty had petered-out in 924, and since then the throne had been continually contested among several local aristocratic families. Like Charlemagne, Otto conquered northern Italy by 951 and declared himself King of the Lombards. Yet the pope refused him an imperial coronation. Ten years later, in 962, Otto was back in Italy again in response to an appeal by the pope for help, and this time the pope crowned him Holy Roman Emperor like Charlemagne; a title that had fallen into abeyance since 924. This was the beginning of an unbroken association between the imperial title and Germany lasting for more than eight centuries. The Ottonian Empire was a remarkable achievement, even if it did rest on the political manipulation of local magnates rather than on administration. Otto’s son married a Byzantine princess. Both he and Otto III had reigns troubled by revolt, but successfully maintained the tradition established by Otto the Great of exercising royal authority in Germany and also south of the Alps. With a realm that now covered much of central Europe, Otto and his immediate successors were the leading rulers in Europe in the mid-10th and 11th centuries. The Ottonian emperors were also great patron of the arts and architecture, spurring the so-called Ottonian Renaissance (936-1002); an analogue to the Carolingian Renaissance which accompanied Charlemagne's coronation in 800. It was notable for the revived cathedral schools, for exquisite illuminated manuscripts, and for early-Romanesque architecture such as St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim. Yet Otto's reign also laid the roots of the Investiture Controversy, a powerful struggle over who held ultimate authority, secular rulers or the Pope. Otto himself deposed two popes and installed replacements more to his liking, and his successors regarded the imperial crown as a mandate to control the Church. The German emperors would decisively lose this first great clash between Church and state, leading to the enduring fragmentation of Germany into a tapestry of small states, with the emperor as little more than a figurehead. Vikings in Russia The main reason that the Vikings penetrated deep into Russia during the 9th-century predominantly was trade rather than plunder, although there was no doubt plenty of sporadic raiding. The rivers of Eastern Europe, flowing north and south, made it surprisingly easy for ships and goods to travel between the Baltic and the Black Sea. We hear of contacts with the Byzantine Empire by 838, and with the Muslim Abbasid Caliphate by 846. They were known in the east as the Rus, would ultimately give their name to Russia. Russian traditional history begins with their establishment of a permanent trading-post at Novgorod, well positioned at the headwaters of the Dvina, Dnieper and Volga rivers which respectively flow into the Baltic, Black Sea and Caspian Sea. Here, it was said, a prince called Rurik had established himself with his brothers in about 860. By 882, another Rus prince had taken the town of Kiev lower down the Dnieper from the Khazar Khaganate, a huge but loose state of semi-nomadic Turkish people to the north of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. The Rus transferred the capital of their new state to that town. In 911, a Rus prince called Oleg attacked Constantinople while the fleet was away. He is said to have brought his ships overland into the imperial harbour, and blocked the entrance until he extracted a highly favourable treaty from the Byzantines. Half a century or so after the founding of Novgorod, a Rus / Slav state was a reality, a sort of river-federation centred on Kiev and linking the Baltic to the Black Sea; Kievan Rus '(882–1240). The Rus had brought with them it seems no women, and mingled with their Slav subjects. By the time Vladimir the Great (980-1015), the Rus had begun to seem something new and different from Vikings; Russians. In about 988, Vladimir took a step that would give Russia its characteristic identity. Legend says that he had the merits of different religions debated before him, and ultimately settled on what would become Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Russians treasure the story that Islam was rejected by him because it forbade alcoholic drink. Vladimir's emissaries saw no beauty in the churches of the Germans. But Constantinople had won their hearts. Of Hagia Sophia, they said in words often to be quoted, "''we knew not whether we were in heaven or earth, for on earth there is no such vision nor beauty, and we do not know how to describe it; we know only that there God dwells among men." The new religion was rapidly and often forcibly imposed on the Russian population, beginning with the mass baptism of the people of Kiev, although paganism hung on in the north for decades. There were diplomatic dimensions to the choice too. In an unprecedented acknowledgement of the standing of the prince of Kiev, Vladimir married the sister of emperor Basil II; his sister Anna may be forgiven for being somewhat reluctant, her future husband already had four wives and 800 concubines. In exchange, Vladimir also agreed as alliance with the Byzantines against the neighbouring Bulgars, among other things. But Vladimir’s choice of Eastern Orthodoxy was decisive of much more than diplomacy; it was the single decision which more than any other determined Russia’s future. Two hundred years later his countrymen acknowledged this, by canonising Vladimir a saint. 11th-century had in many ways probably a richer culture than most of western Europe could offer. Its towns were important trading centres where all goods were exchanged: amber, honey, wax, fur, walrus ivory, and especially slaves from Scandinavia and Ruassia; for silk, silver, and other commodities available from the Byzantines and Muslims. Kiev became famous for the magnificence of its churches; unhappily, being of wood, none of them have survived. Its apogee came under Yaroslav the Wise (1019-54), when one western visitor thought it rivalled Constantinople. Russia was then culturally as open to the outside world as it was to be for centuries. He himself married a Swedish princess, and found husbands for the womenfolk of his family in kings of Poland, France, and Norway. From this reign came the first written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda, ''and also one of the first great Russian works of literature, ''The Primary Chronicle, an interpretation of Russian history in Christian terms. But Kiev's dominance waned in the late-11th-century, and the Russian principalities reasserted their regional independence. Vikings Elsewhere The travels of the Vikings took them far and wide. In southern Europe, Lisbon and Cadiz in Muslim Spain were successfully attacked in 844. In 860, they went further, sailing into the Mediterranean and sacking the Italian port-cities of Luni and Pisa, which according to the traditional account they believed was Rome. But it was the Viking colonisation of remote islands that was arguably their most spectacular achievement. After settling the Scottish islands in the 830s, by 874 Viking longships were beached on uninhabited Iceland, near where Reykjavik now stands. By 930 there may have been 10,000 Norse Icelanders, living by farming and fishing, in part for their own subsistence, in part to produce commodities such as salt fish which they might trade. In that year a council called the Althing met for the first time, following earlier Scandinavian practice. While some would dispute Iceland's claim to be the world's oldest parliamentary democracy, her continuous historical record from this date is still a remarkable one. Two centuries later the population of Iceland was already about 75,000, a level not exceeded until the 20th century. According to the sagas, when Erik the Red (d.1003) was exiled from Iceland in about 986, he sailed west and pioneered Greenland. With a better sense of public relations than of accuracy, he attracted settlers to three separate colonies along roughly 400 mile of the western coast. There were to be Norsemen in this inhospitable environment until the climate changed for the worse with the Little Ice Age around the 14th-century; leaving Greenland to the native Inuit peoples once again. Furthermore, historians no longer dispute the unmistakable archeological evidence that Vikings from Greenland reached North America, over five-hundred years before Christopher Columbus. Norsemen created a small settlement on the northern peninsula of present-day Newfoundland, where they found wild vine growing so named it Vinland; it lasted perhaps 20 years. Decline of the Vikings Gradually the story of the Vikings became the story of the Christianisation of Scandinavia, and the struggle of dynasties in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to establish stable kingdoms; with sometimes the added ambition of bringing the other two into a unified realm. The current Danish monarchy traces its roots back to Gorm the Old (936-958), ruling from Jelling in central Jutland. It was under his son, Harald Bluetooth (958-986), that the unification of the whole of Denmark was completed. He was baptised a Christian sometime in the 960s, possible through influence from Germany. The event was commemorated by the erection of Denmark's famous ruin covered Jelling Stone. In Norway, Christianisation was first attempted by Haakon the Good (934–961), who had been baptised a Christian during his English upbringing, but it was only tentatively cemented during the reign of Olav Haraldsson (1015–1028). In Sweden, early in the 9th-century, the missionary St. Ansgar was able to secure recognition of Christianity as a tolerated religion and permission to build a church in Sleswick. But her first Christian king was Olof Skötkonung (995-1020) who is said to have been baptised in 1008. Meanwhie, Iceland too converted in 1000, when the incumbent law speaker decreed that the community should accept the new religion. Nevertheless, the Christianisation of the people was very slow and not until the mid-12th-century could Scandinavia be securely classified as Christian. After the Viking Age, Scandinavia tends not to be a major actor in European politics. One of the few exceptions was in the 17th-century, when the armies of Sweden under Gustavus Adolphus terrorised Central Europe during the Thirty Years War. At various times different regions became dominant within this Scandinavian triangle. Their rulers incessantly engage in two closely related methods of affecting the balance of power; they went to war against each other, and they married one another's daughters. One such marriage led at last to the union of all three crowns under Queen Margaret I (1389-1412). The union only lasted until 1439, although attempts to restore it, sometimes briefly successful, continued for another century. Byzantine Revival For the Byzantine Empire, the three centuries since the reign of Justinian the Great (527-565) had been virtually one ongoing crisis. Her frontiers had collapsed on every side, with vast territorial losses to the Muslims conquests of the mid-7th-century, and the Balkans had slowly beed overrun by the Bulgars and Slavs. Meanwhile the internal turmoil of the Iconoclasm Controversy (726-842) had almost ripped it apart, while a succession of weak emperor's barely resisted the decay. The problems looked insurmountable, but like Scipio Africanus after Cannae (216 BC), Aurelian during the crisis of the 3rd-century, and Theodosius after Adrianople (378), a man would emerged to drag the Eastern Roman Empire into one last period of rebirth and expansion. Michael III (842-867), whose reign brought an end to the Iconoclasm Controversy, proved yet another weak ruler; he was known as Michael the Drunkard for his love of wine and song. His reign nevertheless did see some significant events: he left the military to his uncle Bardas (d. 866) who led two successful campaigns into Anatolia and Armenia, striking the first blow in almost a century against the advance of Islam; and he appointed the capable statesman Photius (d. 893) as archbishop of Constantinople, against considerable opposition from Rome. He also made one fateful decision to his own great ruin, to befriend an uncouth Macedonian peasant called Basil who worked in the imperial stables. His family was actually of Armenian descent but had been relocated to Macedonia, as part of a common Byzantine policy of forcibly repopulating frontier regions. Basil leaned hard on Michael's naivety to wheedle his way deeper and deeper into his trust, winning promotion after promotion. He then persuaded the emperor that his uncle Bardas coveted the throne, and had him murdered, in order to step into the vacant role as heir. Sixteen months later, the Macedonian had Michael brutally murdered too; the death of the unpopular emperor raised few protests. The bloody path to the throne of '''Basil the Macedonian (867-886) would have been contemptible, if he and his line had not been some of the ablest emperors in Byzantine history. There was suddenly a new spirit in the air, an energy and daring not seen since Justinian's day. In the east, the frontier was strengthened, and continual if slow territorial advances were made against the Muslims of Anatolia. In the west, he encouraged the work of Photius to convert the Bulgars, Slavs, and the Rus to what would become Eastern Orthodox Christianity, pulling the Balkans into the Byzantine sphere of influence. The mission of Saint Cyril and his brother Methodius were not only ultimately successful, but in the process created the Cyrillic writing system, the basis of alphabets used in most of Eastern Europe and Russia. In Italy, he improved relations with the archbishop of Rome, and, with his active support, stemmed the Muslim tide into Byzantine southern Italy, although he was unable to stop the final fall of Sicily, with the loss of Byzantine Syracuse in 878. Furthermore, Basil patiently rebuilt the Byzantine navy that once again became the dominant power in the eastern Mediterranean, clearing the sea of pirates and paving the way for increased trade and an economic boom. Like Justinian, Basil introduced a greatest flurry of legal activity, producing an updated revision of the Code of Justinian. Like Justinian, Basil poured the newly prosperous treasury into a massive building program; buildings, monuments and walls across the capital were given a much-needed revamp after decades of neglect. He also stamped his own spectacular mark on the city with the Nea Ekklesia or New Church, the first monumental church built in Constantinople since the Hagia Sophia in the 6th-century; unfortunately for modern tourists, the church was destroyed in 1453 when the Ottoman Turks took the city. Perhaps it was fitting that Basil's reign ended as it had begun, in treachery; he was almost certainly murdered by his son in 886. It had nevertheless been in almost every other respect a spectacular reign, reviving imperial power, spurring a renaissance of Byzantine art, architecture, and learning, and founding a stable dynasty that would see the Empire achieve one last great flowering over the next century-and-a-half; a Byzantine Golden Age (867-1025). Under Constantine VII (913–959), most of Armenia and parts of Syria were reconquered, effectively turning the tide on Islam; the Byzantines were now the one expanding, the armies of the Prophet retreating. Under Nikephoros II Phokas (963-969), Crete was restored to imperial control after 136 years of Muslim rule. He then campaigned deep into Syria, sweeping all before him, sacking numerous walled cities including Aleppo, and putting an end to Muslim raids on Byzantine territory for over a decade. Most spectacularly of all, he recovered the great city of Antioch, one of the five great archbishoprics of Christendom. Under John I Tzimiskes (969-976), the ambitious Kievan Rus were expelled from Bulgaria, where they had briefly installed themselves as overlord. The zenith of Byzantine power in the Middle Ages came under Emperor Basil II (976-1025). Ascending to the throne at just eighteen, the first decade of his long reign were plagued by attempts to usurp him by two powerful generals and one scheming court eunuch, but with boundless energy and an iron will, he outmaneuvered and outlasted them all. The emperor was now ready to concentrate all his efforts on ruling alone and magnificently. The Bulgarian Kingdom had long been a thorn in the side of Constantinople, constantly raiding imperial territory and they hadn't been idle during the civil wars of Basil's early reign. In 986, Basil led a Byzantine army of some 30,000 men into Bulgaria in a war of outright conquest; Byzantine Conquest Bulgaria (986-1018). This first campaign turned out a humiliating failure, prompting yet another attempted coup, which Basil defeated in part through an alliance with Vladimir the Great of the Kievan Rus; in exchange for his sister hand in marriage, Basil received 6,000 Viking mercenaries. The Scandinavians so impressed Basil that they remained in Constantinople to form the famous Varangian Guard, who would faithfully serve the Empire for the next 300 years as elite tropes of the army and the emperor's personal bodyguard; their most famous member was undoubtedly Harald Hardrada (d. 1066), who after becoming rich in Byzantine service, returned home, became king of Norway, and invaded England in 1066. With boundless self-confidence, Basil turned his attention back to Bulgaria, and invaded again in 1000. This time the Byzantine army patiently and methodically began slowly subjugating the Bulgarians in a campaign that lasted nearly two decades. There were other matters to attend to besides the Bulgarians: in 1004 the Muslims tried and failed to retake Antioch; and Basil broke the power of the land-owning aristocracy of Anatolia, to the benefit of the peasantry, the backbone of the army. Eventually, after losing over a third of their territory, the Bulgarians risked everything in one battle. The Battle of Kleidion (1014) was a utter rout. King Samuel of Bulgaria himself escaped but virtually no one else would. It was here that Basil earned his moniker "Basil the Bulgar Slayer" by which he is known to history, blinding 14,000 prisoners to break the remaining resistance. One in every hundred was spared one eye to lead their compatriots back to the king; Samuel is said to have died of shock. The Bulgarians formally submitted four years later, and under a relatively light Byzantine yoke, would remain part of the empire for almost 200 years. By sheer force of will alone, Basil II had created an army second to none, cowed the fractious Byzantine nobility, and expanded the empire more than any emperor since Heraclius; during the Macedonian Dynasty, the Empire had grown by about one-third. Had anyone even half as capable succeeded him, the Empire's prosperity would have been assured. Yet his successors squandered their inheritance, neglecting the army, and engineering in just 46 years such a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Manzikert (1071) that the Empire would never recovered. Perhaps the historian John Julius Norwich (d. 2018) said it best, "Basil II died on 15th December. By the 16th, the decline had already begun". Rise of Regional Muslim Powers Many of the greatest names of the Islamic Golden Age were writing when the political framework of the Muslim world was already in decay. The Abbasid Caliphs in Baghdad gradually lost control of their sprawling, ethnically diverse empire, beginning with the peripheral provinces. Muslim Spain had been the first autonomous Islamic state in 756, seized by an Umayyad prince who escaped the Abbasid massacre of his family in Syria; Umayyad Spain (756–1031) was effectively independent long before its ruler formally declared himself a rival Caliph in 929. Others were to follow; Morocco to the Idrisid Dynasty (788–974), and Tunisia to the Aghlabids (800–909). The weakness of the Abbasid Caliphs tempted them into short-sighted policies that only hastened the decline, particularly the establishment of a foreign army known as Mamluks. In origin it was composed of slave-soldiers, mostly enslaved Turkic steppe nomads, Georgians, and Egyptian Christians. Outstanding fighters and well-placed to advance their own interests, they frequently took the opportunity. One of the first Mamluks to seize power was the Turkic officer Ahmad ibn Tulun (d. 884) who established himself as an independent emir in Egypt in 868, and quickly extended his control over the eastern Mediterranean coast through Palestine and up into Syria. Another important breakaway came when the Abbasids lost control of Iran to the Buyid Dynasty (934–1062), the first major Caliphate of the Shi'a branch of Islam, rather than orthodox Sunni Islam; a schism that dated back to the immediate successors of Muhammad. In 946, a Buyid general captured Baghdad, deposed the Caliph and installed a new one. Theoretically, the line of Abbasids continued but their effective rule was confined to an area around Baghdad. The unity of the Muslim world then definitively came to an end with the establishment of the Fatimid Dynasty (909–1171) in Egypt in 973. Originating in Tunisia, they were also Shi'a. After seizing Egypt, the Fatimid set up their own rival Caliphate over a broad swathe of the Mediterranean coast from Carthage to Syria, and moved their capital to a new city on the Nile, founded on a Muslim garrison town; it was called Al Kahira (the victorious), though more commonly known today by its western form, Cairo. They would be the chief political and ideological antagonist to the Abbasids for even nominal authority over the Islamic world. Less conspicuous examples could be found elsewhere in the Abbasid dominions as local governors began to term themselves Sultan or Emir, nominally subordinate to the Caliphate. The fragmented Islamic world would be unable to resist the centuries of invasion which followed, although it was not until 1258 that the last Abbasid was slaughtered by the Mongols. Before that came the rise of the Seljuk Turks, and then the Crusades, which prompted a brief revival of Islamic unity under Saladin. But the great days of Islamic empire were over. Nevertheless, culturally the Islamic Golden Age continued almost uninterupted, at least until the sack of Baghdad in 1258. The various Islamic states were more compact and practical to govern. Indeed Islamic Spain was the most prosperous and spectacular realm of 10th-century Europe. By 1000, Cordoba was beginning to challenge Constantinople for the position of largest city on the continent; both had populations of nearly half-a-million people, at a time when Paris and London were still disease-ridden firetraps with barely 25,000. It was not until the 11th and 12th centuries that Spain’s Islamic civilization reached its greatest beauty and creativity, producing some seven hundred magnificent mosques, as well as great learning and philosophy. This did not mean that the Umayyads were untroubled. Islam had never conquered the whole peninsula and Charlemagne recovered the north-east by the 10th-century. There were thus Christian kingdoms in the north making several tentative beginnings at Reconquista. ''Nevertheless, a fairly tolerant policy towards Christians prevailed in Muslim Spain. Muslim Spain was of enormous importance to Western Europe, as was Muslim Sicily after the Norman reconquest in the 11th-century. These were doors to the learning and science of the Islamic world, as well as more practical benefits; through them Christendom received knowledge of agricultural and irrigation techniques. The admiration and repute of Arab writers among Christian scholars was a recognition of its importance. Dante (d. 1321) paid Avicenna and Averroes the compliment of placing them in limbo when he allocated great men to their fate in his poem ''The Divine Comedy. European languages are still marked by Arabic words: "zero", "cipher", "almanac", "magazine", and "alchemy" among them. The technical vocabulary of commerce too, for example "tariff", is a reminder of the superiority of Arab commercial practices; the Arab merchants taught Christians how to keep accounts. It is hard to know whether the European triumphs of medieval Cathedral building, the Renaissance, the Age of Discovery, and the Scientific Revolution would have been possible without the influence of the Islamic world. Strikingly, this cultural traffic was almost entirely one way. The Arabs regarded the civilization of the cold lands of the north as a meagre, unsophisticated affair. But the Byzantines did impress them. Besides having a great political, material and intellectual impact on Christendom, Islam also spread far beyond the world of Arab hegemony. Religion is society for Muslims, and this unity has outlasted centuries of political division. Arab merchants carried it with them wherever they went. Islam reached Central Asia, the Niger River of north-west Africa, the Swahili city-states of east Africa, and India by the 11th-century. Thanks to the conversion of Mongols in the 13th century, it would also reach China. By the 16th century it spread across the Indian ocean to Malaya and Indonesia. There would even be a last, final extension of the faith into south-east Europe in the 16th due to the Ottomans. It was a remarkable achievement for an idea at whose service there had been in the beginning so few resources. But in spite of its majestic record no state was ever again to provide unity for Islam after the 10th century. Even Arab unity was to remain only a dream, though one cherished still today. Category:Historical Periods